Get Cummings

The PM's Chief Advisor running the gauntlet of hate                                                                                                                                        Source: internewscast

Regardless of which side of the fence you find yourself in the 'Cummings must go' campaign, the treatment he and his family have had to endure as glimpsed in this tweet is not British. It is a disgrace. 

Following the example of snowflake no-platformers, get Cummings campaigners have been acting as judge and jury. A witch hunt designed to ensure the departure of the Chief Advisor to the Prime Minister, thus settling old scores after Remainers lost the vote to remain in the EU. 

Allegedly unbiased TV presenters who are paid vast amounts of money by the cash strapped BBC decided that Dominic Cummings' actions when he and his wife were required to self-isolate were reprehensible. The man was guilty regardless of circumstances, timing or his use in the fight against the common enemy, Covid-19

Possibly emboldened by the fact that BBC Breakfast's presenter Naga Munchetty was let off  after she 'breached BBC rules', presenter Emily Maitlis launched into her Newsnight introduction with: "Good evening. Dominic Cummings broke the rules. The country can see that and it is shocked the Government cannot. The longer Ministers and Prime Minister tell us he worked within them the more angry the response to the scandal is likely to be.... He made those who struggled to keep the rules feel like fools and has allowed many more to feel that they can flout them".

 Crackpot Acting LibDem Leader Sir Ed Davey described the breach as "brilliant journalism". The BBC has since said that "an introduction about Dominic Cummings on Tuesday's Newsnight did not meet the required standards of due impartiality".

'Journalists' and MPs following the pack have been lining up to demand the PM's Chief Advisor should either resign or be sacked regardless of his value in combating the Coronavirus. The Church of England's duplicitous bishops have also weighed into the Prime Minister with "lied to, patronised and treated as mugs" although one has to acknowledge their considerable expertise in that area. 

This week we have been celebrating the 80th Anniversary of the rescue of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) from Dunkirk. The coverage of the BBC today is in marked contrast with the desire for victory regardless of the cost in 1940.

The get Cummings campaign has completely lost sight of the need to beat the real enemy, Covid-19.

Sir Keir Starmer has tweeted: "Boris Johnson's unwillingness or inability to do the right thing has left the Government looking untrustworthy and unprincipled. Worst of all he's undermined the public health advice that keeps us all safe, just to keep one aide in his job. Our nation’s health must come first."

Sir Keir is correct. Our nation's health must come first. For that reason MPs, the media and Anglican bishops should stop doing what they accuse Dominic Cummings of having done, putting the country at risk. 

The issue has been flogged to death. 

It is the vendetta that is more likely to undermine the Government's fight against Covid-19 with mischievous suggestions that people should perhaps make their own judgements rather than follow government guidelines.

Postscript [01.06.2020]

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Blasts Bishops over Cummings Controversy

"Controversy is ridiculously overblown, says George Carey

Hysterical, coarsened and divisive nature of debate is creating a dangerous culture war that could harm civic life, he says."

Sex education in our schools

From Coalition for Marriage

Another three councils drop their ‘trans toolkits’

Dear marriage supporter,

We recently wrote to you with several pieces of good news in the battle against harmful transgender ideology. I am pleased to say that there is now more to share.

After being threatened with legal action, Warwickshire and Oxford Council pulled misleading materials which promoted transgenderism in schools. Increasing concerns over the legality of the ‘trans toolkits’ has now seen Shropshire, Kent and Barnsley councils follow suit.

These ‘toolkits’ promote transgenderism to young people. They encourage schools to allow pupils who identify as the opposite sex to use their preferred toilets or changing rooms – even “sleep where they feel most comfortable”.

A 14-year-old girl is threatening fresh legal action against the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) over its controversial LGBT hate-crime guidance for schools.

The unnamed girl recently forced the CPS to drop guidance warning schools they could face prosecution if they did not allow boys into girls’ changing rooms.

She is now arguing that the CPS will be unable to review that guidance properly, due to its alliance with Stonewall. The brave girl has told the CPS to withdraw from Stonewall’s Diversity Champions programme, which gives awards to employers who promote LGBT ideology.

By seeking to destroy what it means to be ‘male’ and ‘female’, transgender ideology undermines true marriage – that between a man and a woman. This momentum against it is great to see. We hope it will continue.
Donate

Yours faithfully,

Dr Tony Rucinski
Director of Supporter Strategy
Coalition for Marriage (C4M)

- o -

But it is not all good news:

Teachers at Archbishop Sentamu Academy in east Hull asked 11 to 14-year-olds to "define pornography, soft pornography, hardcore pornography and transsexual pornography, as well as female genital mutilation, wet dreams, trafficking, male circumcision, breast ironing and more."

The Mirror reports that "a mum was 'fuming' after her 11-year-old daughter's schoolwork asked her to define hardcore pornography and other topics she deemed 'inappropriate'.

"Youngsters in years 7, 8 and 9 were set the work for their Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) class, as part of their home-learning during the coronavirus school shut down."

Following complaints from parents, the academy apologised for any offence caused. 

The children were also asked questions about alcohol, drugs and smoking.

Year of Pilgrimage - not

Social distancing was not required at the Llandaff diocese clergy 'pilgrimage' school in Santiago de Compostela                                            Source: Twitter

The Diocese of Llandaff 's Year of Pilgrimage has fizzled out. The Coronavirus lock down saw to that.

In what she described as an 'ambitious' plan, the bishop of Llandaff flew all diocesan clergy, plus various hangers-on, to Santiago de Compostela as a precursor to the Year of Pilgrimage which was designed to 'reinvigorate its work and worship' as part of the Church’s 2020 centenary celebrations.

Some hope.

With extra time on their hands during the pandemic clergy could read about the depressing pilgrimage of the Church in Wales from birth to death in a book edited by Professor Norman Doe under the title A New History of the Church in Wales: Governance and Ministry, Theology and Society.

At £74.99 for the hardback edition if anyone is still interested in the Church in Wales a paperback version is available at just over £25.

Chapter summaries can be found here.

Somewhere over the rainbow

A consequence of the coronavirus pandemic has seen the rainbow, the sign of God's covenant with every living creature on earth, rescued from LGBT propagandists.

Instead of being used as innocent flag-waving partakers in LGBT propaganda children have been using their own instincts to make rainbow drawings in support of NHS and care workers.

But the brass neck of it! The Christian Institute reports that LGBT activists are complaining that the rainbow is being appropriated by others to be used as a sign of support for the NHS during the COVID-19 pandemic.

They claim that the LGBT community is being “belittled by the meaning of the rainbow being changed in the current climate” presumably unaware that it is a sign of God's covenant with all His people.

It is heartening to see that even the LGBT/same sex marriage obsessed Church in Wales has adopted the NHS rainbow in an apparent return to faith.

"Somewhere over the rainbow

Bluebirds fly

And the dreams that you dream of

Dreams really do come true" 

They didn't have Specsavers!

There has been a lot of talk about how things have changed in 75 years. One thing that has struck me is the few people wearing spectacles 75 years ago.

The above photograph shows a sole wearer of spectacles in a BBC article VE Day: 'I drove general to WW2 unconditional surrender' . Accompanying Newsreel footage similarly shows an almost complete absence of Specs compared with today.

Take a look at the congregation in Dechrau Canu Dechrau Canmol to see the difference.

You have to laugh.

VE Day 75 years on.

VE Day 1945. Prime Minister Winston Churchill with the Royal Family on the Buckingham Palace balcony to celebrate the end of World War 2 in Europe 

Readers who recall the Royal Family and Winston Churchill acknowledging the crowds on the balcony of Buckingham Palace on VE Day in 1945 will have survived WW2 bombings only to be targeted by a more insidious enemy today, the Covid-19 virus.

Official celebrations designed to inject the spirit of joy felt in 1945 have been cancelled. Instead there will be some TV programmes to mark the 75th anniversary of the allied victory. The Queen will address her subjects at 9 pm as did her father King George VI on VE Day.

Life in Britain and around the world had become very different until lockdown imposed dramatic changes in routine in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

The concept of the nuclear family has gone. Marriage has largely been replaced by partnerships, civil or informal, previously regarded as living in sin.

Feminism dominates Anglicanism, Christianity is lampooned, churches are closing while other faiths are protected. Political correctness has become an unwelcome burden, often depriving people of the humour that sustained us in times of difficulty

Notions of gender contradict what used to be regarded as patently obvious while the snowflake generation threaten free speech by no-platforming speakers whose views they disagree with.

On the 75th anniversary of VE Day we are at war again but with an unseen enemy. Older folk who experienced bombings in WW2 and the discipline of National Service find themselves at greater risk from the virus but appear better able to cope, staying indoors as told while some, mainly younger people, ignore the advice, risking the lives of others in the process

In May 1940 when Churchill first addressed the House of Commons as Prime Minister he concluded, "You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: victory; victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival." The same spirit is needed today.

I recall sitting around the radio with my mother during WW2 listening to Churchill's speeches spurring the allies to victory and strengthening resolve at home. Uplifting broadcasts provided a welcome tonic for housewives bringing up their families in difficult times when their husbands faced more immediate perils abroad.

News bulletins are once again dominated by war reports. War against the Covid-19 virus but the BBC has changed its position from blanket support of the war effort to a more critical, gloomy picture. For example, viewers are constantly told that the UK has the highest number of Corona-19 virus deaths in Europe before adding, as if barely relevant, that demographic factors paint a different picture.

Some voices are spreading discontent, encouraging popular demands to relax the restrictions that have lessened the spread of infections. Hopefully governments will remain resolute in the face of opposition and not give in to unscientific populist demands.

Matters become more complicated while devolved administrations, anxious to be seen flexing their independent muscles, arrive at their own conclusions even though based on the same central, scientific evidence. When aired by the BBC such views can make them appear to be aligned with the Opposition.

The blog A Grain of Sand poses the question 'Is Aunty Biased', suggesting the BBC, founded on Christian principles, has "swung to an institutional mindset of sceptical liberalism".

I was intrigued the other day to see a reference to the BBC's Director of Content. Googling revealed not just a content director but an army of 39 ideas people ending with the Lead on Comedy Nations and Regions.

Today there is little original comedy to provide laughs compared with WW2 radio content such as ITMA, Workers Playtime, Band Waggon and Hi, Gang!

Instead the BBC supplements its regular news and current affairs slots with frequent repeats and a constant supply of soccer matches/comments/analyses while evening dramas provide a diet mainly of murder and misery.

Nevertheless, 75 years after VE Day, we will not be glued to the wireless worrying about air raid warning sirens. Instead my wife and I will be watching Auntie focus on doom and misery with a gap celebrating Churchill's promise of victory if we were to stand firm.

We did. Pulling together we are here to celebrate victory. 'Victory at all costs'.

Islamic ideology favoured over Christian faith

The Adhaan call to prayer being broadcast from a London Mosque                              Source: Metro

From Metro: Call to prayer broadcast for first time in London borough for lockdown Ramadan:  "Local authority Waltham Forest agreed that nine mosques could perform the Adhaan as mosques are closed and Muslims are unable to pray communally as they would usually at this time. The call to prayer was first broadcast yesterday and will continue at sunset daily throughout the fasting month of Ramadan, as well as again for Friday Juma prayers." 

Readers will recall the account of a Christian preacher in London who was wrongly accused of Islamophobia after a passer-by called the police accusing him of hate speech. Confiscating the preacher's bible a police officer told him: "You should've thought about that before being racist".

But it is regarded as acceptable in a supposedly Christian country to allow Muslims to declare from mosque rooftops that Allah is superior: Allah is greater (Allahu akbar), that there is no God but Allah and that Mohammed is Allah’s Prophet!

In my entry Christian leaders endorse Islam I referred to the decision of the BBC to broadcast the Islamic call to prayer. 

What hope can there be for Christianity in Great Britain when 'Auntie' BBC, religious leaders, police and councils aid claims to the supremacy of a different god. 

Postscripts

[07.05.2020]

From Christian Concern

Tim Dieppe comments on the recent allowance for several mosques in East London to broadcast the Islamic call to prayer during Ramadan.

[08.05.2020]

From The Conservative Woman

Public call to Ramadan prayer crosses a dangerous line.

Neither male nor female

Joanna Penberthy in PhD secular doctorate attire           Source: Church in Wales

The diocese of St Davids has a new website. After a brief reference to problems imposed by the Covid-19 virus the site features first and foremost the Bishop of St Davids noting: "She is the first woman to be appointed bishop in the Church in Wales, following the Governing Body’s decision in September 2013 to enable women’s ordination to the episcopate."

Similarly at the enthronement of Cherry Vann as Bishop of Monmouth: "guests were all there to see the first woman bishop take her seat – or ‘throne’ – at Newport Cathedral."

Fond of (mis)quoting Galatians 3:28 supporters of the ordination of women have been telling people that there is neither male nor female so why do they have to keep emphasising their sex? It is all about feminism and power regardless of the cost to others.

At the 2017 services of celebration held in Wales' six Anglican cathedrals to mark 20 years since the Church in Wales first ordained women priests, Bishops’ Adviser for Church and Society, Canon Carol Wardman, was the preacher at Brecon Cathedral. Following the example of "bullshitting" Barry Morgan she put her own interpretation on Galatians 3:28.

Self-centred feminist claims about so-called equality and gender fluidity have been brought to a head in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Higher death rates for men brutally emphasise what, to the majority of us, was self evident:  Men and women are biologically different.

Postscripts

[05.05.2020]

The Department of Health and Social Care have announced a review of "emerging evidence to suggest that #coronavirus may be having a disproportionate impact on some ethnic groups, as well as certain genders."

For 'certain genders' read 'men'.

[06.05.2020]

"..our acceptance of our bodies and biological sex is a mere social construct, not a physical reality. It tells young children that they have an ‘inner gender identity’ which may or may not align with their biological sex." - From ‘Free to Be’ produced by a group called EqualiTeach. It is designed for use in our primary schools with the intention of challenging something the transgender lobby calls ‘cisnormativity’. - The Conservative Woman

Caption corner 1 May 2020

"Peter's Pence"                                                                                                  Source: Church Militant

As usual publishable captions will appear under Comments.